Cousins Nick Fertig and Dan Baumiller have been brewing beer out of their garage for four years.

For a while the only people who tasted their beer — a product of Full Tilt Brewing — were guests at private parties. But after months of tweaking the recipe for their flagship beer, Baltimore Pale Ale, Full Tilt may soon get its big break.

Full Tilt is one of several contract brewers that will begin producing beer in Peabody Heights Brewery when it starts operating by the end of the month. When the brewing begins, Peabody Heights will open its doors to local, small-scale brewers, such as Full Tilt Brewing, who can brew their beer, package it in kegs or bottles and ship it from the site.

“On purpose, we designed this brewery a little bigger — too big for us — to have space for other craft brewers,” said Patrick Beille, one of the brewery’s three co-owners. “There are a lot of home brewers or craft brewers who want to brew their beer but only a few of them have the financial resources to be able to have a brewery or to brew their own beer.”

Contract brewers will pay a fee per barrel of beer they produce to use the Peabody Heights facility.

Stephen Demczuk of the Baltimore-Washington Beer Works and Beille, who will debut his Public Works Ale at Peabody Heights, spearheaded the brewery, located at 401 E. 30th St. Both are co-owners at Peabody Heights, but they will also produce their own beer there.

Beille, Demczuk and their third partner, Hollis Albert, are leasing the building that houses Peabody Heights Brewery, a former bottling plant. It has space for 48 9,000-liter fermenters that can each produce 24,000 12-ounce bottles of beer per batch. “That’s a lot of beer,” said Albert, the brewery’s general manager.

Currently there are four fermenters in the building. Beille said Peabody Heights will grow slowly, beginning with two or three other brewers in addition to Raven Beer and Public Works Ale.

There are a few co-op breweries around the country, although Peabody Heights is not a co-op in the traditional sense — contract brewers will not share ownership of the brewery. But Dana Curtis, business team leader at the Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery in Austin, Texas, said brewers sharing equipment provides business opportunities they would not otherwise have.

The model works for Black Star Co-op, which has seen 3 percent growth each week during the past year, Curtis said.

“It gives a lot of people the chance to have opportunity that they wouldn’t have on their own,” Curtis said. “It really pushes competition so that people are going to be the best that they are going to be.”

With a good variety of craft beer comes hearty competition, but Beille said he prefers the collaborative spirit fostered by the shared brewery.

“I know that the people who are brewing here are going to compete in the bar to sell their beer with my beer,” Beille said. “I got more ideas and more inspiration from working with them and working all together.”

Not only will the brewers compete with others within the co-op, they will also have to face competition from the Baltimore’s burgeoning craft beer market.